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Comment by InitialLastName | Hacker News Reader

> "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"

is semantically different from

> "The right of each person to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".

A group can have a right in the general sense that is restricted from individuals in that group. Note that this is a different construct than is used in the First Amendment (and I have a hard time believing that the framers took their semantic decisions in drafting these phrases lightly):

> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

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DC v Heller makes clear the present day interpretation of the people conveys individual right. People is also said in the fourth amendment, surely you're not arguing individuals have no fourth amendment rights.

In the first I'm specifically referring that it says the right is to the people to petition grievances. The wording pretty clearly doesn't prohibit congress from stopping non-people from assembling/petitioning.

If you can't have a gun you are necessarily not a person based on the present day interpretation of the courts. Therefore most aliens are not people and law can prohibit their grievances (derogatory posts perhaps) and assembly and abridge their protection from search and seizure.

Note:

>> "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!

> Lol you purposefully chopped off the part where some of that was explicitly qualified to 'people' rather than to anyone!

You mean the bit after the clause I cited, which applies to a different thing than the freedom of speech?

My objection, to be clear, is your insistence on bending over backwards to justify the assertion that the denial of one right necessarily implies the denial of other rights based on a strange inversion of the idea of "personhood".

My assertion is people are people. If the Constitution says the right is to people then people have the rights if people. If you have no right to bear arms you're not a person and the first contrary to your claim does explicitly tailer congresses limitations on assembly and petitioning to 'people' just as the second tailers to people.

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